September 11 and 12. On Wednesday the 11th, we said farewell over lunch to Rod and Fiona, our guides to South African history, culture and sights, who are driving back to Pietermaritzburg today.
Then we drove to Cape Point Park. The Cape of Good Hope and Cape Point are here.
Cape Point is at the very tip of the peninsula below Cape Town. The Cape of Good Hope is a spit of rock to the west of Cape Point, usually thought of as the southern most point of Africa.
But it turns out this distinction actually belongs to Cape Agulhas and we drove there on the 12th.
It's located across False Bay and a number of kilometers to the east. Here the Indian and the Atlantic oceans meet.
The current on the western, Atlantic, side is cold and comes up from Antarctica, while the Indian Ocean or eastern side brings warm currents south. So, the biology of the eastern and western sides are very different, with correspondingly cold and warm water fish and plants.
Our plan was to stage a 'foot in each ocean' photograph there, but the rocky terrain and low tide made that impossible. So we made up a shot straddling a small current of water coming in from the oceans.
On the way back to Kalk Bay, we stopped in Hermanus in search of whale watching opportunities. We took a random turn towards the shore at a place called Roman Rock where we found a small group of people watching several whales very close to the shore. For about an hour we watched the Southern Right Whales rolling through the water before one finally put on a show with a series of breaches.
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